Facilitated early cortical processing of nude human bodies

Temporal and spatial localization of prediction-error signals in the visual brain

“…Since privileged status has been claimed for bodies as well as faces (Hietanen and Nummenmaa, 2011; Alho et al, 2015), we performed a further experiment involving simple shapes as stimuli for which any privileged status is unambiguously not the case. Thus, Experiment 3 considered location trajectories to both Face and simple Shape stimuli.…”

Revealing Clothing Does Not Make the Object: ERP Evidences That Cognitive Objectification is Driven by Posture Suggestiveness, Not by Revealing Clothing

“…In addition, there is some evidence that N170 amplitude in general (i.e., for upright bodies) is modulated by body sexualization. Hietanen and Nummenmaa (2011) found that nude bodies generated larger N170s than bodies with swimsuits followed by fully clothed bodies, suggesting that sexually arousing stimuli elicit larger N170 amplitudes (see also Alho, Salminen, Sams, Hietanen, & Nummenmaa, 2015;Feng, Wang, Wang, Gu, & Luo, 2012). Although interesting, this line of work does not specifically speak to configural vs. analytic processing of these bodies and related cognitive objectification.…”

Affective responses to body stimuli: comparing male and female bodies with cropped heads and masked faces

“…This suggests that both types of body stimuli are equally adequate for investigating visual body processing with regards to the affect that they evoke and thus, stimulus selection should not be based on this argument. As a result, it is unlikely that the effects of differential valence or arousal can explain the inconsistent findings evident in studies that used the two different types of stimuli (e.g., Alho, Salminen, Sams, Hietanen, & Nummenmaa, 2015;Robbins & Coltheart, 2012a;Yovel et al, 2010). It is possible that attentional processes may account for these differences instead, as it has been shown that unusual aspects of a stimulus are fixated on more quickly and for longer (Rayner, Castelhano, & Yang, 2009).…”

“…Taken together, our findings add to a growing literature recommending that stimulus gender be considered when investigating visual body perception. Visual cortical processing mechanisms can differ according to the gender of the body observed (e.g., Alho et al, 2015;Gervais et al, 2012;Groves et al, 2017;Heflick & Goldenberg, 2014;Hietanen & Nummenmaa, 2011), and it has been shown that even the earliest of electrophysiological responses from visual cortex can be modulated by top-down processes (e.g., Meeren et al, 2005;van Heijnsbergen et al, 2007). As a result, if female bodies receive different affective evaluations than male bodies, even early cortical effects may differ.…”